'Big, generous, illuminating and beautifully written' John Banville, Financial Times

From the best-selling author of How to Change Your Mind, a pioneering search for consciousness in the brain and beyond

A World Appears is the story of the quest to solve the greatest mystery in nature: consciousness. How does it feel to be you with your own personal feelings, thoughts and experiences? Every one of us is intimately familiar with consciousness, but no one knows how – or why – it came to be that three pounds of grey matter can generate a subjective point of view.

The early 1990s marked the birth of a new science of consciousness, based on the assumption that the phenomenon could be explained in terms of brain activity, but that effort is faltering, and wilder ideas, such as panpsychism, are now getting a hearing. Indeed, there is now reason to doubt that ‘objective science’ as we have known it since Galileo has the right tools to plumb first-person experience. A World Appears takes Michael Pollan from the laboratories where scientists are searching for the neural correlates of consciousness to encounters with philosophers and novelists and Buddhist monks, whom he finds have just as much to teach us about consciousness, if not more.

A story that begins in a brain lab in Seattle ends, of all places, in a cave in the mountains of New Mexico, where the author discovers that explaining consciousness may be less urgent than learning to practice it in our everyday lives.

We tend to think that everything important comes from the centre: from big cities, from established orthodoxies in the sciences and the arts, from the Establishment in all its forms. We think this because the centre tells us it is so, but it’s a lie. It is only at the edges that we think, innovate and thrive.

This book travels to the frontiers of human culture and consciousness; to the edges of continents, of evolution, of artistic and political movements, and life itself: from a rocky precipice in the Peloponnese where the first human set foot in Europe to an ancient Egyptian temple where monotheism was invented; from St Francis, kissing lepers to the giant bird-eating mice of St Kilda.

Why do we stare at sunsets? Why do we celebrate birthdays and grieve for those who are gone? Why do all adventures begin when we leave and get lost? Who has the better view of reality – the Government or the dispossessed?

And what happens when we live with the knowledge that we’re all teetering on the edge of the dark?

How to get a better night’s sleep in 3 weeks:

• Don’t believe everything you read or hear about sleep
• Let go of the 8-hour rule
• Use the simple sleep diary in the back of this book to record your sleep pattern over 3 weeks
• Discover your personal sleep needs
• Examine your attitude towards lying awake at night
• Shorter total bed times might be better
• Focus on the reason for lying awake rather than on the reason for not sleeping
• Reduce stress
• Keep regular bedtimes
• Follow the rules of nature
• Respect your personal circadian rhythm
• Don’t tempt the night-time ghosts

Human sleep as we know it today evolved hundreds of thousands years ago, to suit a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. It’s not always compatible with our modern lives, but remains an essential function, vital for our health, well-being and daytime functioning. In this groundbreaking new book, Dr Merijn van de Laar investigates the origins of sleep based on archaeological findings and anthropological studies in contemporary hunter-gatherers, looking at the major discrepancies between our primordial bodily needs and our current sleep-inhibiting behaviour.

Cave dwellers lived in balance with the forces of nature. They had adapted perfectly to environmental influences such as light, temperature and seasonal variations. The way they ate and moved during the day must have had a positive effect on sleep quality. We need to look to their example, and adjust our eating, exercise, light, temperature and, last but not least: our expectations towards sleep. By taking on board the ancient wisdom of our ancestors, we will improve the quality of our sleep, the way our bodies were designed to do it.

‘COMPLETELY TRANSFORMED MY WAY OF THINKING ABOUT DREAMS’ Jay Shetty
‘A JOURNEY THROUGH NEUROSCIENCE, NEUROCHEMISTRY, MAGIC, MYSTERY . . . A FANTASTIC READ’ Dr Rangan Chatterjee
‘TRANSFORMATIONAL’ Julia Samuel
‘ELEGANTLY LIFTS THE CURTAIN ON THE DREAMSCAPE TERRITORY’ David Eagleman
‘THIS BOOK WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE’ Lewis Howes
‘OUR POET LAUREATE OF NEUROSCIENCE’ Greg Whyte
‘AN INSTANT CLASSIC’ Bryan Fogel

Dreams are a source of mystery. They have changed the course of individual lives and the world, spurring business deals, inspiring art and scientific breakthroughs, triggering military invasions and mental breakdowns. Yet the source of dreams is not mysterious. They are the product of an extraordinary transformation that occurs in the brain each night when we sleep.

In this pioneering book, bestselling neurosurgeon Rahul Jandial delves into the dreaming brain and shares stories from his own practice to show the astonishing impact that dreams have on our waking life. He explains how dreaming of an exam might help you score up to 20% higher, why taking a long nap could make you better at problem-solving, and even that certain dream disorders can warn you of serious diseases like Parkinson’s years ahead of other symptoms. He offers clear and compelling advice, backed by new research, to become a lucid dreamer, understand your dreaming patterns and unleash their creative power.

Sharing the very latest discoveries in modern neuroscience, This Is Why You Dream provides answers to some fundamental questions: Why do we dream? How do we dream? What do dreams mean? And perhaps, most importantly, do we sleep in order to dream?

How to get a better night’s sleep in 3 weeks:

• Don’t believe everything you read or hear about sleep
• Let go of the 8-hour rule
• Use the simple sleep diary in the back of this book to record your sleep pattern over 3 weeks
• Discover your personal sleep needs
• Examine your attitude towards lying awake at night
• Shorter total bed times might be better
• Focus on the reason for lying awake rather than on the reason for not sleeping
• Reduce stress
• Keep regular bedtimes
• Follow the rules of nature
• Respect your personal circadian rhythm
• Don’t tempt the night-time ghosts

Human sleep as we know it today evolved hundreds of thousands years ago, to suit a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. It’s not always compatible with our modern lives, but remains an essential function, vital for our health, well-being and daytime functioning. In this groundbreaking new book, Dr Merijn van de Laar investigates the origins of sleep based on archaeological findings and anthropological studies in contemporary hunter-gatherers, looking at the major discrepancies between our primordial bodily needs and our current sleep-inhibiting behaviour.

Cave dwellers lived in balance with the forces of nature. They had adapted perfectly to environmental influences such as light, temperature and seasonal variations. The way they ate and moved during the day must have had a positive effect on sleep quality. We need to look to their example, and adjust our eating, exercise, light, temperature and, last but not least: our expectations towards sleep. By taking on board the ancient wisdom of our ancestors, we will improve the quality of our sleep, the way our bodies were designed to do it.

Thirty-two days underground. No heat. No sunlight.

4 June 1938. Nathaniel Kleitman and his research student make their way down the seventy-one steps leading to the mouth of Mammoth Cave. They are about to embark on one of the most intrepid and bizarre experiments in medical history, one which will change our understanding of sleep forever. Undisturbed by natural light, they will investigate what happens when you overturn one of the fundamental rhythms of the human body. Together, they enter the darkness.

When Kleitman first arrived in New York, a penniless twenty-year-old refugee, few would have guessed that in just a few decades he would revolutionise the field of sleep science. In Mapping the Darkness, Kenneth Miller weaves science and history to tell the story of the outsider scientists who took sleep science from the fringes to a mainstream obsession. Reliving the spectacular experiments, technological innovation, imaginative leaps and single-minded commitment of these early pioneers, Miller provides a tantalising glimpse into the most mysterious third of our lives.

‘The essential book to fix your life from the inside.’ Richard Moriarty, North West District Editor – The Sun

In Dream Cure Theresa Cheung brings her expertise to unravel the mysteries behind common dreams, exploring their deeper meanings and implications for personal growth. She empowers readers to navigate the intricate landscape of their dreams, fostering a deeper understanding o their own psyche. Cheung guides readers on a path of self-discovery, helping them harness the power of dreams to resolve anxieties, overcome obstacles and ignite positive transformation.

This book is the ultimate guide for anyone seeking to unlock the potential of their dreams as a tool for healing and self-improvement. Whether you’re plagued by recurring nightmares, seeking guidance on major life decisions, or simply curious about the hidden depths of your subconscious, The Dream Cure offers a wealth of wisdom and practical advice.

For as long as we’ve studied the mind, we’ve believed that information flowing from our senses determines what our mind perceives. But as our understanding has advanced in the last few decades, a hugely powerful new view has flipped this assumption on its head. The brain is not a passive receiver, but an ever-active predictor.

At the forefront of this cognitive revolution is widely acclaimed philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark, who has synthesized his ground-breaking work on the predictive brain to explore its fascinating mechanics and implications. Among the most stunning of these is the realization that experience itself, because it is guided by prior expectation, is a kind of controlled hallucination. We don’t passively take in the world around us; instead our mind is constantly making and refining predictions about what we expect to see. This even applies to our bodies, as the way we experience pain and other states is shaped by our expectations, and this has broader implications for the understanding and treatment of conditions from PTSD to schizophrenia to medically unexplained symptoms. From the most mundane experiences to the most sublime, it is our predictions that sculpt our experience.

A landmark study of cognitive science, The Experience Machine lays out the extraordinary explanatory power of the predictive brain for our lives, mental health and society.